Home Is Where Your Heart Is: Fluff 'n' Extras
by Stax Fluffington
Summary: All the extra stuff that happens in between the events in my other story, "Home Is Where Your Heart Is". It's all the stuff that doesn't help the plot, but I wanted to write anyway. Excessive fluff. I accept *most requests, but only when it is during established events of my main story.
All the extra stuff that happens in between the events in my other story, "Home Is Where Your Heart Is". It's all the stuff that doesn't help the plot, but I wanted to write anyway. Excessive fluff. I accept *most requests, but only when it is during established events of my main story.

"That's pretty good, Steve" Dani said to the blond child sitting next to her.

"Thanks" he replied, without looking up. He was drawing a woman's face, some actress, off of a newspaper. He was using wet, discarded newspapers for reference. Dani shook her head.

"We have to get you something better to draw, Steve. You're wasting your talent on that, its so runny you can barely make out her face." Steve shrugged. "And you need pencils, that one is shorter than your thumb. Your thumb is pretty short" she noted.

"I don't have money" the thirteen year-old said, failing to hide the sadness from his voice. Dani stood up sharply, grabbing his arm and pulling him along with her.

"Well, I DO. Come on, we're gonna find you something to draw with" she said firmly.

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"This place looks good." Dani looked around. "Steve?...Steve?" Steve was back on the sidewalk, wheezing his small lungs out. "Crap, was I walking too fast?" She mentally facepalmed. Steve stood up, still breathing heavily, trying to look 'ok'. His red cheeks gave him away.

"Yes. I'm fine. Where are we...?" Dani sized him up for a moment, and after deciding he wasn't going to die this second, turned to face the shop again. "Its just a store that sells paper and writing tools. Come on, we're gonna get you some real art supplies." The bell on the door alerted the shop owner as they came in.

"Hello, can I help you with anything?"

"He needs pencils. And paper" she said, looking at the sketchbook Steve was holding. She had flipped through it many times on her own, and knew that it was packed cover to cover with his incredible scribbles. He had taken to drawing smaller subjects in any blank spaces on the page because he had no other paper. "Anything that is good for drawing, that's what it will be used for." The man bent down under the counter and pulled up an array of pencils. Steve wheezed excitedly at her elbow.

Dani felt bad hearing that- Steve had known her for a year, but her time jumping meant he was still new to her. She didn't have a habit of looking out for his problems yet. She was constantly forgetting to slow down for him, causing him to have difficulty breathing. What made her feel worse- the wheezing was cute. He whistled when he wheezed, and being followed around by a wheezing, whistling, almost-golden-retriever-puppy with sad eyes made her want to hug him hard. He was like an adorable little brother and she couldn't even be sensitive to his needs. She sighed.

"I believe you need a range of hard and soft pencils in order to draw properly, am I correct?" She asked the man behind the counter. He nodded, and explained the difference between the pencils. Dani, being uninterested in these things, kind of zoned out. She was pulled back by the man finishing his lecture and putting five pencils down in front of her.

"These are the hardest, the softest, and three in-between" he said, nodding with finality. Steve wheezed dissapointedly.

"These are expensive Danny, you don't gotta buy them for me" he said, trying to look like he wouldn't be disappointed if she agreed, failing miserably. He looked so sad she had the urge to squeeze him again. _Don't, you'll break him_ she had to remind herself.

"We'll take them" she said to the shopkeeper, who put them in a paper bag. "Do you have a sharpener as well? He's been using his pocket knife" she asked. One was produced. "How about that magazine there, he needs something to draw too." Steve's eyes were going to fall out of his head if they bulged any more. "And then we just need paper" she began, but Steve pulled her off to one side.

"Danny, I can't pay you back for this stuff, I don't have a job-" she cut him off,

"Draw me a nice tree and we'll call it even, I can't draw things for myself" she said. He didn't look convinced but she didn't wait for an answer. She had no clue what she had just gotten herself into.

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"Steve, you know I love your drawings but if you don't stop leaving them at my bush I will break your pencils." This latest one was a cat. It looked like it could crawl off the page, it was that good.

"You bought me all my supplies, though! I have to pay you back!" Steve said from the "Danny bench", as he called it. It was the bench she had taken him to the first time they met, right across from the bush she always slept under. _I shouldn't have showed him where I live,_ she thought.

"Are you drawing another one right now?" She asked. Steve quickly pressed the sketchpad in his hand up to his narrow chest. "You are, aren't you" she said, frowning. "Let me see."

"You can see when it's done, I will hang it on your bush." Dani facepalmed.

"Steve, I don't have a place to put them. You know how many drawings of yours I have?" He shook his head. "Fifty-two. I counted. I can't keep stuffing them in my bag. I live in a BUSH. You see walls to hang them on?" He got his patented "stubborn Steve™" look on his face.

"You keep buying me stuff. I don't have anything else to give you back." He began whistling as he breathed, which Dani knew meant he was getting upset. She wiped her face with her hand.

"Alright, fine. But when I bleed out from papercuts next time I get something from my bag, I'm blaming you." The smile that came her way made up for all the papercuts in the future.

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"STEVE, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH." Steve looked up from the bench. The now fourteen year old frowned at Dani.

"What are you talking about?" He said, his forehead wrinkled with confusion.

"YOU. KNOW. WHAT. I. AM. TALKING. ABOUT."

"What?"

"THE DRAWINGS, STEVE. YOUR BEAUTIFUL DRAWINGS ARE GETTING WET. BECAUSE I HAVE NO PLACE TO PUT THEM." His face fell.

"But I-"

"If you say 'I owe you' one more time, I will stick that sketchpad where the sun don't shine." Steve had an appropriately shocked expression on his face. Dani backpedalled. "What I mean is- you can't keep drawing me things, I have no place to put them. You have given me at least three good-sized sketchbooks worth of drawings and they are going to waste because I can't pack any more into my bag." He looked slightly upset.

"I suppose I could store them for you in a box under my bed..." he began hesitantly.

"YES! YES!" She pulled drawings out of her bag and began placing them on his lap. Her magic bag had seemed infinite before, but with Steve constantly giving her drawings, she quickly found its limit. Steve's eyebrows kept going up further and further on his face as she kept stacking them on his lap, higher and higher.

"Once I get myself an apartment or a real house, I will have a room just for these. But for now, YOU NEED TO HANG ON TO THEM." Dani figured that was the last she would hear about the drawings.

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Dani was going to cry. The day after she had showed up at Steve's mom's funeral, she had gone back to the bush. The park was deserted. A few buildings had been put up around the park and it was fenced in. It wasn't really public now but she could tell by the cigarettes that people hung out here occasionally. The "Danny bench" was intact, if very weak and rotted. The slats groaned and bent as she sat on them. But, the state of the park was not why she felt oncoming tears.

The bush was there. It was more of a baby tree now, but it was still there. And it was draped in pictures.

Right before she had disappeared for six years, she had introduced Steve to plastic page protectors. The drawings were all covered- most of them were wrinkled and faded nevertheless, but still visible.

Dani stood up again and walked to the bush. They were all signed by Steve, and some of them had dates on them. Hot tears began streaking across her cheeks. The earliest ones seemed to have an optimistic theme. Children with dogs and cats, a parade, a drawing depicting Steve, Bucky and her smiling with their arms slung over each others shoulders- the last one Dani pocketed to save.

When the dates got to about a year and a half after she had disappeared, the drawings took a darker turn. A child begging in the snow, a woman crying inconsolably on a street corner, a dying tree... with Steve sitting under it?

Her chest felt tight. _I couldn't have been there even if I had tried_ she attempted to reason with herself. The guilt didn't recede.

Dated two years after that, when he would have been about seventeen and a half, the drawings took a more neutral stance and were drawn in color. A floral arrangement, buildings, a study of the human hand-

Dated a year after that, the drawings stopped. Her breath caught in her throat. The last drawing was someone at a grave, laying a flower down. She knew that profile. It was Steve's profile... she squinted at the headstone. She wasn't positive, but it looked like it said Danny on it. A sob escaped her. He had given up hope of her coming back long before she actually came back.

Stepping back, a drawing at the top caught her eye. It was newer than the rest, the paper was white instead of yellow and wrinkly.

Standing on her tip toes, she pulled it down. It was dated yesterday and it just said "welcome back" in artistic writing. She dried her eyes off with her sleeve. She reminded herself that he wasn't mad, even though it had been such a long time. She promised herself that she would never get mad at him for leaving her drawings again.

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 _You promised you wouldn't get mad, you promised you wouldn't get mad_ she reminded herself as she pinched the bridge of her nose _._

"Steve, how much did this cost you?"

"Between the paints and the canvas... well... alot?" _Don't get mad, don't get mad..._

"It's half your height, how did you get it over the fence?"

"Bucky helped me. Do you like it? It took me three weeks to finish!"

"Its... its beautiful, Steve." It was. It really was. It was a painting of the three of them flying kites, a day she remembered well. The colors were off a bit- make that alot off- but that could be attributed to the fact that Steve was slightly color blind. It was still beautiful.

"I didn't know you could paint with oils" she said. Steve got the happiest grin on his face.

"I can now. A new store opened with paints and brushes and frames and canvas and all kinds of stuff. I like hanging out there." Dani shook her head with a snort.

"You're gonna love Hobby Lobby. You'll never leave."

"What?"

"Nevermind."

"So... what are you gonna do with it...?"

"I wish I knew."

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 _I know I can't survive a fall through the ice,_ Dani thought to herself as she was getting in her gear. _I'm not a super soldier. I know I won't survive this._ She pulled the drawing of the three of them out of her back pocket and looked at it. _Bucky, I am so so sorry... I couldn't save you, I can't save Steve, and now I can't save myself. I wish I could go back to those days and just be with you two..._ she re-folded it and put it into the pocket next to her heart. It made her feel a bit better. Maybe she would die, but she would die with the ones she cared about right there next to her. _Figuratively. But don't think about that now._

"Lets go." And with that, she headed out to meet her possible end.


End file.
